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Thursday, 23 February 2012

Life Circle 2012 – Pushing the Envelope

To be honest I left my comfort zone
behind some time ago, everything that I now do is pushing the
envelope. Doing the weekly shop, eating in a restaurant, buying
petrol and paying in the kiosk, all of the things I used to do I'm
now doing for the very first time again.

There are very few things that I can do
that will push me outside my comfort zone, especially ones that I
could do within the time available for this task. In fact probably
the only things that are left that I could do which would actually
take me way out of my comfort zone involve heights.

I really don't like heights.

When I was a teenager I quite happily
joined in with hurtling down zip wires, I'd quite happily do that
now. However, the one time I ever tried abseiling I couldn't do it
and actually climbed down a 6 foot wall rather than abseil down even
that short a distance.

When I was at university I joined the
rest of the sub aqua club throwing myself off a 30 foot quayside into
the sea, admittedly while wearing a wetsuit and plummeting into 20 or
so feet of water. I even clambered onto a foot for pillar and threw myself off there. I'd not be able to do that now though.

Despite the impression people might get
of me I'm actually quite introverted. It takes a lot for me to do
things that people might notice or even to be able to talk to people
that I don't know.

Getting out in front of the audience at
the Pink Kitten Christmas Cabaret took a lot of courage.

A few years ago I spent some time as a
Street Pastor helping people who were out and about on a Saturday
night, making sure people got home safely, listening to people if
they felt the need to talk and offering help to those that needed it,
whatever that might be. Talking to people that I didn't know was a
big challenge for me.

So finding something that would stretch
me was difficult.

In the end I have found something
suitable but I'm not going to share that here as there are other
people that need to know about it first. It is going to be a
challenge and it certainly will stretch me. At the appropriate time
I'll share it.

There is one other thing that would
stretch me and that is to abseil down the side of a very tall
building. Apparently there's a 200 foot one in Bristol that people
are abseiling down in March in aid of charity. Now that really would
be pushing the envelope but I'm going to have to work up to that one.

In fact I've done what I'd planned today. I've just got to wait a bit for the dust to settle.

I occasionally have these bizarre ideas which seem good at the time, usually 2am in the morning or after a bottle of wine. Abseiling down the side of a building is one of those, although as I'm not too fond of heights it would certainly go some way to helping me get over that. Now bungy jumping or sky diving, those are insane ideas. :-)

It takes some building up to sometimes. Something you decide to do and then do straight away is probably within your comfort zone. Procrastinating about something is a good sign that you're out of your depth.